This invention relates to oceanic fishing and has both apparatus and method aspects.
The invention has particular pertinence to the fishing of tuna and similar large fish found in quantity in some ocean waters. It has long been the practice to employ purse-seine nets, setting the net around an approximately circular area, then drawing and pursing the net to reduce the area of the bottom opening, thereby creating a pocket or purse with the net to entrap the fish while drawing the net aboard ship, then shortening the net to reduce the purse size, concentrating the fish in an ever smaller area and volume. From this point, various methods have been used to transfer the fish into the ship, such as brailing, suction pumping, and shoveling the fish into containers which are lifted onto the deck. The pursed net cannot be lifted, due to the weight of the fish, in some cases amounting to one hundred tons. All the methods heretofore in use have been awkward, laborious, time-consuming, and inefficient. They have called for considerable hand labor and for operation on relatively small quantities of fish reducing the availability of the ship and net to undertake further catches of fish in the area.